Oracle Blog

Steve Wilson's Weblog

Two Sides of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a hot buzz word, but I find there are people who mean two distinct things when they talk about it. These are:

Rich Web Experience

User Generated Content

These both have parts to play in the world of next-gen web apps. As a guy who used to work on rich internet applications I find the technology fascinating. One of the guys working on on the next-gen UI for our systems management tools showed me some of the components they're using. They're rather spiffy AJAX components that allow for a lot of dynamic presentation that used to require much fatter clients. You can check out some of the components here.

On the other hand, a lot of the power of the next gen web is about allowing the applications themselves to be enhanced by their users. YouTube is just a video streaming service from a technology point of view (and not a very good one really). However, in truth it's a broadcasting platform that allows anyone to run a TV station or a movie studio. System administrators are really smart people and have deep knowledge that they like to share. How do we make Sun Connection a platform for sharing within the System Administrator community? That's a key question for the next step in our evolution.